


and the stars listen to her counsel

by pidgeandcat



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/M, Fluff, Zuko is an Awkward Turtleduck, Zutara, and she is also very frustrated a lot of the time, i mean technically they’re in college yeah, katara is a botany major, katara is an introvert, sort of a flower shop au i guess but technically it’s a home depot, speaking of that they’re in love in the home depot, started as a crack fic but i am not funny and take everything too seriously, there’s gonna be hug content i swear, yeah man, zuko is A Gentleman, zuko works in customer service
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:27:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26236372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pidgeandcat/pseuds/pidgeandcat
Summary: in which one small interaction yields forth many more unexpected moments of hopeful solidarity.
Relationships: Katara & Zuko (Avatar), Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 41





	1. self checkout

The sun was severe and searing hot, restrained from gracing the foreheads of unsuspecting men and women only by the slats of the greenhouse roof. Katara squinted against the glare as she inspected yet another pot of orchids, humming softly as she lifted the sad head of one of the parched blossoms. The planter spun inadvertently due to the tautness of the cord that suspended it from its aluminum hook, and she dropped the wilting flower before drifting away to diagnose a basin of chrysanthemums.

She pitied the plants in this so called greenhouse; the conditions they were kept under were so far from ideal it could hardly be called a botanical sanctuary. The botany major inside of her yearned to track down the manager of this run down establishment and give them the sternest talking to that her empathy would allow, but she was focused on a task and nothing could drag her off course. A vase of floccose fountain grass caught her eye, and after a brief examination she deemed it healthy enough and placed it on her pullcart. It slouched alongside a hanging fixture of the least limp geraniums she had found, and she sighed at the desolate scene. 

The highest point of the afternoon was drawing to a close, and Katara shielded her eyes against the sun as she picked her way to the self checkout. The employees at the home depot were nice enough, but she didn’t trust herself not to begin spewing a tirade about the neglectful natures of the greenhouse workers who should have been taking care of the desperate greenery rather than doing the renegade in the storage rooms. She expected to have a smooth checkout and return home to nurse her plants back to health, but much to her consternation the machine wouldn’t process her items. Katara grumbled in frustration and for lack of a better solution, she smacked the monitor with the palm of her hand. This accomplished nothing, much to nobody’s surprise. She cradled her reddened palm, anxiously craning her neck to survey the vicinity as it stung.

There were plenty of staff milling about. It would be easy enough to simply saunter over to someone and ask for help, but Katara would quite literally rather die than initiate a social interaction. She tapped her foot and exhaled sharply, crossing her arms over her chest. If she didn’t get those geraniums home soon, they might be past the point of recovery. She moved around the plants on the scanner hoping that she would hear the shrill beep of its recognition, but it was to no avail. She gave up and sat down in the bag area with a huff.

All the other stations were taken, so she really had no options other than to wait or leave. Her brow furrowed deeper as the minutes passed and she was about to make a timely exit just as an employee came up to her, clearly noticing her exasperation. Part of her cheered, as she might be able to finally leave the balmy store and relish in the cool breath of her air conditioner. Unfortunately, the majority of her froze up and hid behind a sofa. Katara really didn’t want to hold a conversation, especially not right now.

“Hey, can I help you? It looked like you were having some trouble.” The boy seemed to be slightly older than her, and she could hear the exhaustion lapping at the edges of his customer service voice. For a moment Katara was startled by the garish swatch of angry scar tissue sprawled over his left eye, but she quickly averted her gaze and spoke with aggravation.

“Yes. The scanner won’t recognize my items.” The coldness of her tone seemed to take him by surprise, but he shook the emotion away and stepped forward to see what he could do. He had just about as much luck as she did; he pushed a number of useless buttons and fiddled dumbly with the plants before resorting to kicking the base of the machine with his workboot. When this provided no results, he sighed and rested his forearms on the scanner.

“I’m so sorry. I don’t know how to fix it.” His voice was abrasive with restrained vexation, but after a thick moment an idea seemed to catch fire in his mind. He turned and faced her, his eyes nervously glancing to the side. 

“Look, I don’t really know what to do about this, and this is gonna sound really unprofessional, but…” He scratched the back of his head, a slight flush of crimson materializing softly over the bridge of his nose. “My manager is kinda mean, and I don’t really want to get him for help, so... Um, I mean, if you really want to you can pay me with cash right now, but I’m...uh, I’m willing to pay for your plants?” His voice cracked slightly at the top, and Katara smirked in spite of herself. She might generally hate people, but this guy was hilariously awkward. 

“Okay, if you’re sure. But I’ll be paying you back.” The boy seemed flustered still, but he nodded without meeting her eyes and helped her transport her plants to a regular checkout so they could at least feign normalcy. Katara made a big show of pantomiming their empty exchange as he rung her up and hastily shoved his own bills into the register, and she was strangely pleased at the small smile her performance had earned. They loaded her purchases back onto the pullcart, and he handed her a “receipt.” She pretended to skim the wrinkled paper before shoving it in her bag.

“So when is your next shift?” Her question was offhand, but the boy seemed taken aback.

“Wait, you were serious about that?” He spoke incredulously, gold eyes widening and vivid scar stretching uncomfortably across his skin. 

“Uh, yeah? I’m not gonna just let you pay for my poor geraniums without making up for your trouble.”

“Oh, no, it’s no trouble. Really!” he insisted unconvincingly, shaking his splayed hands in dismissal, but Katara won their staring contest and he rolled his eyes. “I can tell you’re not taking no for an answer. My shift gets off at seven tomorrow.” He tried to scowl, but failed as Katara smiled cheekily at him. She pretended not to notice the color stirring on his face once again, more so refusing to acknowledge its presence on hers as well.

“Great! See you then...” she prompted.

“Zuko,” he finished. “And you?”

“Katara.” They shook hands firmly. “Nice doing business with you, Zuko.”

“You too.” Zuko offered her a lopsided grin. It was tentative and a bit awkward, but endearing nonetheless. She found herself returning it, her eyes subconsciously skimming the soft dark hair encroaching on his brow line and the upward quirk of the corners of his mouth. As she exited through the automatic doors, she waved over her shoulder and smiled softly, this time to herself. She was, for some reason, kind of looking forward to their meeting. Funny how one person can change the course of your entire day, or in Katara’s case, become the subject of your thoughts for the next fourteen hours.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hiiii it’s cat!! if you read this i am forever in your debt haha. i kind of know where this is going but i don’t know exactly how it will get there.,, so if you read this thank you So much again and if you have any feedback please leave a comment!! please let me know if you’re interested in more :)))


	2. geraniums

The drive back to her apartment was weary and long. By the time Katara arrived, the clementine sun burned sunken behind the hills, or perhaps the hills had risen up to meet the sun. She sighed and killed the engine, removing her plants gingerly from the backseat where she had cautiously secured them behind seatbelts. She supposed it was slightly unnecessary to strap them in as if they were children, but she always felt the strangest maternal urge towards her greenery. Maybe it was because there wasn’t much else for her to attach herself to.

Katara climbed the staircase awkwardly, her hanging geraniums clasped in her right fist and her pot of fountain grass wrapped snugly under her left arm. Several times she stopped to hoist it up farther as if she were bouncing a baby on her hip. When she finally reached her door, she dropped her plants more heavily than she would have liked to admit and stretched her clasped arms above her head. They were much heavier than she’d expected, and after five flights of stairs her limbs felt leaden. She stumbled into her apartment, purchases once more in tow, and collapsed on the couch with a huff.

Katara let her thoughts wander as the thin white paint of the ceiling grayed with her fuzzy vision. The labors of the day had left her taxed and exhausted. She had scrambled to write a school paper about thirty minutes before it was due, and was unafraid to admit that most of it was pulled from thin air. She had nearly ripped her hair from her scalp when she realized she had turned it in before removing her personal authors note, which read: “Im too pretty to do research suck it mrs.b” But she stuck by the notion that it wasn’t her fault; she would have more control over her actions if she wasn’t spread so thin by all her schoolwork. Maybe if you wouldn’t constantly give us more work than humanly possible, I wouldn’t call you a bitch under my breath every day, Katara thought angrily towards her professor. That woman expected more assignments from them in a day than there were drops of water in the sea.

Of course, she was also constantly burdened by the fact that she wasn’t even fully moved in. It had been a week. A full seven days. And yet, heaps of sunken cardboard boxes packed with porcelain dishes and tablecloths still mobbed her entryway. Every time she entered her new home she ran the risk of collapsing the entire stack. Katara meant to hunker down and unpack completely, she really did, but she had just been so busy that she hadn’t found the time. That was what she told herself, anyway; it definitely wasn’t because she ached for her childhood home, standing crookedly yet proudly at the corner of the street. She had definitely forgotten the comfort of familiar cool walls flanking her as she slept, a singular strip of light giving dimension to the otherwise blackened hallway. And she definitely didn’t long to feel the sensation of her bare feet sinking into the plush carpet once more, the spritely scent of bergamot and salted caramel bouncing through the air as her brother ambled about on another quest for food. Katara smiled sadly as she was reminded of the reasons she spent little to no time in her insignifiant apartment, its bare white walls and industrial window imposing over her modest additions to the space. It was too unfamiliar, too modern, too lonely. She had found lately that she was lonely more often than not.

Katara sat up and rubbed her eyes, glancing at the beacon of her too-brilliant phone in the dark room. 6:47 pm. Dusk was approaching; she needed to get her plants hung up and settled before dark. She sluggishly dragged them out to the balcony, her tangled hair taunting in front of her face and hindering her sight. The pot of grass was simply nudged into the corner to be watered at a later date, just another addition to Katara’s infinite list of forgotten to-dos. The geraniums were a bit harder to accommodate.

The only hook available to extend its services was screwed into the balcony overhang, which was inconveniently a good five feet above her. Katara grunted as she strained on the tips of her toes, stretching her abdomen in a futile attempt to grow tall enough. She slumped over in defeat, the potted flowers thumping violently to the ground. Cursing her 5’2” ancestry, she assessed the situation. She knew one thing for certain: she definitely could not hang it by herself. She didn’t have any chairs to stand on, either; none that were unboxed and put together, anyway. She sighed and tugged her hair out of her face where it had fallen again. Nothing could ever be easy for her.

Katara was tempted to let it go for the night and do it later. However, she knew herself, and she knew that she would promptly forget the mental note among the tangled web of other reminders she held. If it didn’t get done now, it never would. But how would she do it? Judging from the indigo sky, it was about seven or eight, meaning that most people wouldn’t want to leave their cozy space and give a helping hand. She didn’t know most people in the complex, anyway, but she did know one person who just might be willing.

When Katara knocked on her neighbor’s door, she had expected it to be opened by a kind old man with a belly rounded by ginseng tea. Instead, she found herself face to face with a familiar boy. It took her a split second to process her shock, her eyes once more grazing the memorable features of his face, both his and her eyes wide. His mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water. After another minute of flustered silence, Katara stuttered, grasping for anything to say.

“I- uh- You- Zuko-?” She blinked hard, as if that would make him disappear.

“Uhm.. hi?” he mumbled, rubbing the back of his neck. “I didn’t know you lived here…”

“What are you… why are you in my neighbor’s apartment?”

“He’s my uncle. He just went to the store…” They didn’t make eye contact, which was fine with Katara. She was perfectly content with her gaze trained on her shoes. This was possibly the most awkward interaction she’d had all month.

“Anyways…” Zuko shook his head as if it would clear the tension. “Did you need my uncle or something?”

“Well, not him specifically… but I needed help hanging one of those plants I bought today, and I figured most people wouldn’t want to help me, and your uncle and I are kind of friends, I guess.” She fiddled with her sleeve.

“If you want, I could help you.” Katara brought her head up to look at him properly.

“For the second time today? Still in customer service mode, aren’t you?” she said, crossing her arms and smirking at Zuko’s scoff.

“No! I just consider myself a nice person. Although customer service training has had an effect on me,” he added under his breath. She snorted.

“Well if it’s not too much trouble-”

“Lead the way.”

\--------

“So how exactly did you meet my uncle?” Zuko asked as he hung the geraniums with minimal effort, much to Katara’s jealousy.

“Well, we are neighbors after all. And the Jasmine Dragon is the best tea shop in town.” She leaned her back against the balcony, fiddling idly with strands of her hair as she spoke. Zuko mirrored her in the opposite corner, stuffing his hands into his hoodie instead.

“Yeah, I guess he can make a pretty kickass cup of ginseng. I’ve never been the biggest fan of tea, though.”

“How come I’ve never seen you around here before, if Iroh is your uncle?” Zuko tensed, and she winced. “Sorry, sorry, I don’t mean to pry-”

“No, no, you’re fine. I was just- there were issues, at home, and I just needed to get as far away as possible…” he trailed off, clearly not wanting to discuss it. Embarrassed at the overstep, Katara fell silent. The air was taut for a few moments before he spoke.

“Are you new around here? I mean- judging by the wall of boxes in your entryway I would assume you just moved in.” Katara nodded, relieved at the subject change.

“Yeah, I just drove up here a week ago. I’ve just been so busy I haven’t had a minute to unpack, between, you know. School and all that.” She was only slightly embarrassed that he’d noticed what an absolute disaster her apartment was.

“If you want, I could help,” Zuko offered quietly. She looked up at him, puzzled as why he’d want to do so many favors for a complete stranger.

“Oh, no, that’s okay. You’ve done enough for me already.”

“Are you sure? It really seems like you could use the help. It’ll go faster with two people.”

Katara contemplated this possibility. It would certainly be nice to be able to walk through the front door without hip checking sharp cardboard corners. Plus, it wouldn’t hurt that they would get more time to talk, too. She definitely could use a friend these days.

“Okay, if it’s not too much trouble,” she relented, and Zuko gave her a small smile as they stepped back into the flat, the brisk night air nipping at their ankles as the door swung shut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi..... im back :-) i totally didnt abandon this,,,, hahah....... but in any news i will try to update it without a MONths long hiatus,,, lol sorry about that. if you left a comment last time tysm and im doin it for u <3 feedback is appreciated!!


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